Kieran Turner's photos

The wheel closest to you is the one that was expertly provided with a new stud nut by a Kazakhstan mechanic. Within just a couple of hours, and with the most basic of facilities, he had the old, sheared and threadless stud off, and a replacement fabricated, fitted, and refitted in fact until it was to his satisfaction. He was ably assisted by a good dozen teenage apprentices.

This would have been so lovely if I hadn't been on manual focus for a difficult subject and forgotten to turn it back onto auto! Still, it's a lovely example of how simply ready to be jolly and friendly everyone was out here. Not unlike the guys selling watermelons. We had finally decided to stop to buy some of the many, many watermelons which are inexplicably* for sale at the side of the road all over these countries. Something went a bit wrong with the negotiations. We ended up with seven of them crammed into the cars! When we were about to leave somebody politely pointed out that we hadn't paid nearly enough. The attempts to then give six of them back failed miserably, but in the end the lovely salesman asked, "tourists?" When we said yes, we were sent on our way with seven, now FREE, watermelons! * Inexplicable because we never saw a single field of them actually growing!

I've not mentioned it yet, but across the desert we found it to be very true that the skies seemed bigger than at home — there's just nothing to break them up. But even up here in the foothills of the mountain ranges, it still seems like there's just so much sky, so much land... so much space. Probably because it's simply not full of people like Europe is.

Or the hay monster's gonna get you!

After a long tough slog up into the mountains at night – with the cars really suffering from the altitude of 4000m, and the only respite being the amazing, occasional dimly lit by tungsten bulbs, roadside rows of sweet shops and cafés – I dove us off the road and found this little spot for the night.

I like the textures here.